Trump says US will 'permanently pause migration' from 'third world countries'

Donald Trump has said the US will “permanently pause migration” from all “third world countries” in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The US president said he would “end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens” and remove “anyone who is not a net asset to the United States” in the post on Thanksgiving, as his administration ramped up efforts to restrict immigration.

The comments come after two National Guard troops were shot near the White House on Wednesday. Specialist Sarah Beckstrom died from her wounds the following day, and 24-year-old Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe remains in a critical condition.

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The suspect accused of the shooting has been named as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who worked with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before the American withdrawal in 2021, who drove from the state of Washington, some 2,600 miles, to launch the attack.

After the shooting, Trump said his administration would review everyone who entered from Afghanistan under former President Joe Biden – a measure his administration had been planning even before the shooting.

According to the State Department, more than 190,000 Afghans have been resettled in the US since the military withdrawal.

“HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!” Trump wrote on Thursday.

The president did not provide any details as to how he would go about creating a “reverse migration” system, and previous attempts to enact something similar have been met with legal challenges.

He also did not expand on what he meant by “third world countries”, a term now considered an outdated and derogatory way of referring to low-income or developing countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan and Syria.

The Alliance of Afghan Communities in the United States condemned Wednesday’s shooting, while also expressing concerns over the impact of Lakanwal’s actions on the immigration process for other Afghan nationals.

“A single individual’s crime must not jeopardize or obstruct the legal cases of thousands of deserving Afghans who meet all US legal requirements,” the alliance said in a statement, which called for federal agencies to process Afghan immigrants as usual, without delays or suspensions.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced new guidance for vetting people travelling to the US from 19 high-risk countries in response to the National Guard shooting.

The 19 countries include Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

“Effective immediately, I am issuing new policy guidance that authorizes USCIS officers to consider country-specific factors as significant negative factors when reviewing immigration requests. American lives come first,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said on Thursday.